It was 20 years ago today...

May 10, 1986, twenty days after riding my two-year old, $169 Motobecane Nomade up to observe the Wells Ave training races, I bought my first racing bike, a Specialized Allez SE. You see, I didn't know anyone who raced bikes. The Motobecane was purchased so that I could get some exercise after vegetating and hustling weed for ten years. When I was a kid, I had a nice LaPierre 10 speed with Simplex derailleurs, Mafac centerpulls, and cottered crank. One of my goals back then was to ride a century, but that never quite worked out. My friend Taras and I would ride from Stoughton to Hyde Park and back, going up (mostly walking) and down Blue Hill on the way. This was maybe 35 miles round trip. When I was 12 or 13, I did my longest ride, fully loaded with camping gear, me and some other delinquent rode from Stoughton to Horseneck Beach in Westport. It rained that day too. We trucked down 138 all the way through Fall River into Tiverton, then over to 88 and down to the campground. It rained the whole two days we were there, and we stayed in our tent and ate all our food, so we ended up calling for a ride home. We made the kid's mother drive back the way we came so that we could clock the mileage, which, as I recall, came out to a little over 60. After that, I think my bike fell apart and I stopped riding, and got distracted by other ways of wasting my youth.

The first time I rode the Motobecane, I made it about 9 miles before my ass was so sore I had to start walking. Ouch. I stuck with it though, and worked my way up to regular 20 and 30 mile rides from my apartment in Randolph over through my old stomping grounds, and present home in Easton. The idea of racing came from being a gearhead, and if something had wheels, well then you should race it. Hearing about Wells Ave, I rode up to check it out. Everyone had a nicer bike than mine, as well as helmets and funny shoes. Hence, the Allez was purchased three weeks later. This was a sweet bike for just $600. An Ishiwata frame, hand made in Japan, with Sun Tour Superbe Pro and Specialized own brand components. I still have the bike, and it is quite possible that I will take it to Wells Ave on the first weekend of July to commemorate the 20th anniversary of my racing debut.

The 20 year theme on this blog might get a bit old by the end of the year. In 86 I limited my racing to Wells Ave, and then the Boston Road Club "C" division championships, which was a stage race. Starting with a short TT on a loop adjacent to the old Marlboro circuit race course, we then did the circuit races in the afternoon. On Sunday, we finished with a technical crit on the old Polaroid Norwood campus that is now the home of Putnam Investments. I won the road race but ended up 2nd on the "C" GC when Jeff Metz soloed away in the crit. He ended up being pretty good and making it to Cat 2 and doing quite well in hard road races like Putney.

As fate would have it, because I was a medalist, I attended the annual BRC banquet, even though I really didn't know anyone in the club yet. This was in the fall, and there I learned that this guy Buzz Tarlow was going to be holding a "cyclocross" training series on Sundays after the Wells Ave season ended. Back then, MTBs were a new thing, and cyclocross was about as obscure as anything you could imagine. I started going to the sparsely attended series, ended up buying my Rockhopper and converting it to drop bars, and training through the winter. It was here I first met Tom Stevens, who was then a young Cat 2 riding for the Richard Sachs team, as well as USCF official Bill Dolan, who would take his son Billy. If all this sounds familiar, it is because I think I have written about it before, but too bad.

After my season of "cross" and then, because I worked evenings, training hard all winter, I got my first USCF license in 1987, and you know most of the rest.

Bulletin - Bulletin - Bulletin

We interrupt this blog entry for a friggin' rant. Feltslave, I know you are reading this, so tell those fuckers that you work for to stop putting the plain yogurt in the exact same fucking container as the French Vanilla! I just discovered that I have not one, but two quarts of friggin' plain in the fridge, and this is AFTER making the same mistake once before. God, that shit tastes nasty. WTF? You're the buyer, right? Start buying a different color container for the French Vanilla. We blind fucks deserve to get what we want too. Back to our regularly scheduled drivel...

So who cares how I started riding anyway? I don't know. However, we do have some new guys in the club, and they ask all these dumb questions and do all this dumb shit, and one day it occured to me that I have been where it is that they want to go. Notice it is not that I am where they want to be. They can't be that stupid. No, seriously, fitness is a journey, not a destination. Yes, I know that I have written that before, but it is really true so screw you, I am repeating it. There is no "back in shape." Every day is a new day, and you have to make it happen for you every day, forever.

This week we have the rain. Remember back in February when everyone was bitching about the weather? It hasn't been so friggin' bad, has it? In fact, this has been about the sweetest spring I can remember. The races have all been run in good conditions, the nights and mornings warm enough for training, and the weekends all good. This week, use the time to enable yourself to train when there is no rain. Rest, catch up on chores, visit Mom, fix your bike, all that shit. Consider this "enabling week." Then if things turn better weatherwise next week, you can be a selfish, neglectful mofo all over again and live for the ride. That's all it takes. Thanks for reading.